


warm brother and cold brother

by apolliades



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abstract, Angels, Angels on earth, Brothers, Id Fic, Nonbinary Character, Original Character(s), Other, Religion, Trans Character, Vessels, goddddd who knowssss, kind of, prayers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I miss my wings, brother.”<br/>“I miss mine too.”</i>
</p><p>two angels on earth forgetting why they were put there in the first place. falling in love and falling in sin and becoming almost human. a warm angel and a cold angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	warm brother and cold brother

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by "texts between angels trying to live as mortals" by keaton st james (boykeats.tumblr)
> 
> self indulgent stream of consciousness unedited unchecked / written nov. 2015

One of the angels is tall and cold and has eyes that say everything is beneath him. Everything is far away and he is detached. The humans are inconsequential. 

His brother is tall and radiates heat and has eyes that seek out and wish to learn and devour. He becomes so absorbed and interested in the humans and their funny little plights that he feels their emotions almost as strongly as if they were his own. That would be ridiculous – he does not have any of his own, or so he is told. He does not care to question it. He is busy with his obsessions.

He will choose a human he likes, and he will become their dream. He will shape his body and his voice into a vessel they will love and want and he will spend a lifetime with this one human. His brother does not understand how he does not grow bored and tired with such trivial things.

Neither of them is very good at keeping vessels for very long. The cold brother is a little better, because he knows how to keep complete control, how to muster all of the strength he has got and channel it inwards, so he does not scorch the tender flesh and does not burn out the delicate eyes. But it is hard. He does not allow himself to grow fond of any vessel, because it is never long until he needs another. The vessels are so weak. Even what humans consider strong is so weak. They grow ill or they break. It happens often. He does not mourn them. 

The warm brother does. He falls in love over and over again, with his vessels. He falls in love with human beings and their delicate fragile beauty and he woos them and steals their vessels for himself. He makes them fall in love with him first, so that they give up their flesh willingly; they trust him when he visits them in their sleep and they open themselves up to him so he might burn out their souls and replace them with himself. They do not mind. They welcome him. They love him, and adore him, and they leave their bodies and go away for him without question. He does it tenderly, kissing their hearts, letting them drift on soft breezes towards heaven. 

The cold brother is less sentimental about the process. He takes vessels quickly; he tell the inhabitants that their time has come and they must surrender themselves to God now. Whether they surrender or not, he takes them swiftly, forces out their weak mortal souls and fills their bodies. He pretends not to be selective, but he has preferences, like anyone else. He likes his vessels to be as strong as humans can make themselves, he likes them to belong to the devout, and he likes them to have beauty, when he can. 

Warm brother chooses vessels that interest him. Sometimes he will choose one that is fragile just so he can see how long it might survive with him inside of it. Sometimes he will choose the body of a suffering mortal and relieve them of their pain and take it onto himself and what was agony for them he will barely feel. 

He likes believers. He likes to see their faces glow and become elated when he shows himself to them. He likes to see the dawning on their faces when what they have always believed in but never quite trusted becomes real and true and almost tangible in front of them. He likes to see their happiness. It feeds him. He embraces them and feels them burn up. 

He likes non-believers, too, though. He loves the shock on the faces of atheists when he shows himself and proves beyond a doubt that here he is, real and true, whether they want him to be or not. Some of them find instant faith in the brief moments before their passing, changing their minds at the sight of him. Some of them are angry, and resist, and those he holds gently until they melt. 

Cold brother likes those the best, although he does not really like anything at all. He likes the ones no one will suspect. He likes the contrariness, although he would never confess to liking anything at all. 

-

One day one of warm brother’s favourite vessels – a soft, small creature, with round eyes, long hair, whose inhabitant had worn a crucifix around their soft throat, silver and diamonds for everyone to see, and had murmured prayers every night before sleep – slips, just one step out of place, and falls, and shatters just like that, broken beyond repair. Cold brother finds him weeping in mourning of the loss and tells him he is weak. He tells warm brother he is becoming too much like a mortal, that if he is not careful he may not be able to return to their home in the sky. Warm brother declares he does not care. He slips into a new vessel and with that one he attends the funeral for his lost loved body. He sheds hot salt tears that make the vessel’s delicate little eyes sting and burn. He breathes the smell of the funeral flowers. It is hard not to burst his new vessel into flames. He wants to put his pious loved one back together. He misses that vessel. He misses the softness and gentleness and the faith he could feel in every tiny corner of it.

Cold brother stands beside him with his vessel face in hard lines. Cold brother puts his vessel hand on warm brother’s vessel shoulder and warm brother feels the angel heat of the touch burning his mortal skin. 

Warm brother asks God to watch over the soul that he pushed out of that vessel. He does not receive an answer.

-

Cold brother is terrible at giving comfort but warm brother has no one else to turn to and so seeks him out in the dark night when the mortals are all sleeping and they are hearing nothing but radio silence from Heaven. 

“Lately my prayers have been going unanswered,” says warm brother with his vessel mouth against cold brother’s vessel throat, “how about yours?”

Cold brother is as quiet as God has been. 

“Do you think that means we have been left here?”

Cold brother is quiet and still and keeps himself in control so well that even the skin of his vessel is chill to the touch. The warmth of warm brother’s vessel breath raises steam between them.

“Shall we wander the Earth forever, brother?”

Cold brother is quiet and still. Warm brother sighs a deep vessel sigh.

“I miss my wings, brother.”

“I miss mine too.”

Warm brother goes to sleep even though he does not need to because it makes the vessel body limp and relaxed and he can see the last remnants of the soul that used to live inside of it in the form of half memories half dreams. 

“I fear I am becoming too much like a mortal,” warm brother says one day. 

“I fear you are, too,” cold brother tells him.

Warm brother kills his vessel and finds a new one. He tears the soft body apart beyond recognition. He burns it up, scorches it, leaves it nothing but dust and grey ash. He has seen mortals do this to each other. They burn their dead vessels sometimes and scatter the remnants to the wind. 

Cold brother finds a new vessel every day. He leaves the old ones empty in dark places.

“I’m beginning to forget why we were put here, brother,” says warm brother, standing in a thunderstorm. His vessel skin prickles with the cold and the wet. He is so hot inside he cannot feel it.

“You must not,” cold brother warns him. He opens his eyes and lets his vessel retinas scorch. 

“No. I must not.”

-

“Are we being punished?”

Cold brother does not know but he does not wish to say so. They should be above not knowing. Warm brother asks too many questions. He should not have questions. He should simply know.

They are ethereal and eternal and yet they feel less and less so with every mortal day that passes.

It is strange even to feel the mortal days passing. They ought not to. They ought to be above and beyond time. But they feel their vessels ageing. They feel the mortal bodies grow closer to death with each and every little breath. 

It frightens warm brother and when he realises that what he is feeling is fear, that frightens him even more. It makes his mortal vessel quiver and shake. When he tries to still its hands his light and warmth explodes from its fingers and it bleeds and dies and he must find a new one. 

They should be above and beyond temptation; they should not be tempted by any sin because they are angels and part of their purpose is to lead and protect the mortals when they pray for it — _lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil._ They are God’s angels and they should be carrying out His will and helping these poor frail mortals, and they ought to be stoic and strong. 

They should not wonder how it feels to be tempted and then realise that through that wondering, that they are being tempted already. It happens to warm brother first, because he is younger and he has always been weaker and softer and perhaps that is why it happens, perhaps it is his punishment for not being strong enough to be an angel. 

A pretty mortal with long eyelashes and long fingers and long hair puts his hands on warm brother’s vessel cheeks and kisses his vessel mouth. Warm brother doesn’t mean to, but in the rushing heat of the moment, in the sweet blood taste of the mortal’s mouth and the hot blood thrum of the mortal’s body so alive and so delicate, warm brother loses control and surges out for more, to be closer, and he burns the mortal right up. His light bursts through his vessel mouth in through between the mortal’s lips and right into his insides and his soul whistles into the air and his mortal body dissolves into ash and dust and light. 

Warm brother wails into the wind, mourning his loss. He wants to go back to Heaven and find the mortal’s soul there and say he is sorry and that he did not mean to do it, but he cannot. He cannot get back to Heaven because he cannot remember the way. He prays for guidance and receives none.

“This must be punishment,” he says to cold brother. They sit side by side in a park and watch mortals wander and feel the warmth of their souls and listen to their thoughts and their wishes and their prayers. 

They still grant what prayers they can, even though their power is dwindling with every moon that passes, and it is growing harder and harder to leave one vessel for another. 

“I must have committed an act most grievous.”

Cold brother stares ahead. Warm brother can barely see the glow of his angel soul behind the lens of his vessel eyes anymore. It is the faintest softest light. 

-

“I am beginning to understand why they do it,” warm brother says one night as they drift through streets in dying vessels, seeking new ones. It is becoming very hard, hard and harder by the night. They feel too close, too connected. Sometimes they can feel their thoughts and their memories lingering for days after the soul has vacated the flesh. One morning warm brother had woken and for a moment had felt that he was the mortal who had inhabited the body and he had not questioned it until he had seen cold brother hover beside him. 

“Why they sin,” he says, although he does not need to clarify; they do not even really need to speak to one another out loud, as everything ought to pass between them, already understood. But sometimes it is nice to say the words. It is good practise, for when they walk among the mortals. 

“That mortal boy’s mouth tasted like honey,” he says, and cold brother’s vessel gaze on his vessel face is sharp and burning. It makes his vessel flesh prickle and heat. He turns away.

“There is an ache here,” warm brother says, placing his vessel palm over his vessel chest, where he can feel his vessel heart thud thud thud steadily, keeping the body alive, even though its soul is gone and there is an intruder in its place. 

“There is such longing, for Sins. They bring such pleasure. They bring elation.”

He is talking now of course of Sins of the flesh, only, not of the Sins of violence and fear or of greed or of cruelty. 

“I fear I am beginning to forget why they are even sins at all,” warm brother confesses, and when he looks to cold brother again, cold brother rises and lets his vessel dissolve and disappears into the air to seek another. 

Cold brother finds it harder and harder to be near to warm brother. At the same time he cannot stand to be away from him, because to be a celestial being alone lost in a world of mortals and Sins and death is unthinkable. It is unheard of, it is unthought of, it is unbearable. 

But warm brother is starting to feel more and more like a mortal and less and less like an angel and it is almost harder to watch that happen than it is to be alone. Cold brother is afraid for him. But he does not know what to do. He has never not known what to do in his endless years of existing. To an angel, everything is clear. 

Cold brother wonders if this means he is no longer an angel. He begins to realise he should choose a vessel he could spend a long time in, soon, because it is becoming so much harder to detach himself from them. He is finding it hard to leave them without destroying them. Not that the lifespan of a mortal body is very long at all. It is barely the blink of an eye, for an angel. 

He kills a vessel one night by sitting in a bar and drinking to the point that it becomes almost sinful. He does not know why he does it. Perhaps it is purely for the thrill. Perhaps it is because of the ache in his vessel chest that warm brother had described. He has felt it, too, but until now he has not been tempted, he has resisted. 

The alcohol makes his vessel weak and difficult to control. He puts a vessel foot wrong and the body slips and tumbles and dies just like that. He chooses one that is younger and stronger and healthier to replace it. It is a precaution. Before, he had liked older ones. They were calmer, steadier. Not now. Now he needs the determination of youth to survive. 

-

Warm brother falls to his vessel knees before cold brother, like a mortal before a shrine to God. Hot blood tears glow in his vessel eyes and burn his vessel skin as they pool and rush down his vessel cheeks. 

“We are killing them,” he declares, out loud in his vessel voice. “My brother, we are killing them! Why are we allowed to take their bodies? To force out their souls? Who are we to decide their time has come?” he is pleading, miserable. He looks so human. There is barely any glow at all in his vessel eyes. 

Cold brother puts his vessel hands on warm brother’s burnt vessel cheeks. He lifts him to his vessel feet. 

“We send them to God. We send them to Heaven. That is the wish of every mortal. We fulfil their wishes and send them to eternal Paradise.” 

Warm brother gazes at him with desperation. Cold brother fears he has lost him for good, now. He fears he will never be an angel again. 

“You have seen how they live on Earth. You have felt their pain and their suffering. You know how they ache and long to be released. We are sending them to God. We are doing God’s work.”

“But some of them cling so desperately to their bodies, brother! Some of them do not want to go!”

-

Warm brother does the impossible. He falls in love. He falls in love with a mortal; a mortal boy, who is soft and always has tears in his eyes and always looks like he is fighting not to let them touch his skin. The soft boy prays every night, fervently, on his knees by the bed like they used to, shaking fingers pressed together pointing to the sky.

This soft boy is frightened, but warm brother is not sure of what he is so afraid. 

“I’m a boy,” the soft boy says, insistent and trembling with his hands tight on warm brother’s vessel arms. “I know I don’t look like a boy but I am a boy.”

Warm brother does not understand. This strange habit of human beings to categorise themselves into odd little boxes they call gender bemuses him. He waits until the soft boy falls asleep and then pushes inside of his head to work him out and learn him and know him. 

He begins to understand. The soft boy has a hatred for his vessel that warm brother finds difficult to comprehend. Human beings are so superficial. Warm brother has never understood that. To him, every human being is so beautiful. Everything on Earth is so beautiful. There is beauty even in death and in cruelty and in suffering, if looked at with angel eyes. 

The soft boy has flesh where he does not want it. This is not something new to soft brother. This is not something he has not seen before. But for the soft boy he wishes to fix it.

So warm brother performs a miracle. He feels as he performs it that it is going to be his last. He lies beside the soft boy and watches him breathe in his sleep. Then he reaches out of his vessel with his angel hands and touches the soft boy and changes him. Humans are soft and malleable and it is easy to shape them but it is harder to do so without damaging them, to do so while keeping them whole, while keeping them human at all. 

Warm brother is as careful as he can be, but he still leaves his scorch marks on the soft boy’s pale flesh, shapes like human handprints. They are soft pink scars, on his chest, between his thighs. Warm brother drifts away and waits for him to wake. 

In the morning the soft boy falls to his knees in front of warm brother and his tears run fast and warm on his face and he says, “look, God has answered me, look, look, I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy,” and opens his shirt and puts his hands on warm brother’s vessel wrists and places warm brother’s vessel hands on his changed chest.

“God has touched me,” he says, guiding warm brother’s vessel hands to the fingerprint scars. “He has made me how I should be.”

Warm brother smiles. He does not tell the soft boy that it was he himself who touched him, that he has not heard from God in a long long time. Instead he puts his vessel mouth to soft boy’s scars and kisses him lightly, careful not to burn him further. 

“Pray with me,” the soft boy murmurs, so warm brother kneels with him and closes his vessel hands around soft boy’s steepled fingers and they murmur to God together. Warm brother does not tell the soft boy that God stopped listening to him a long time ago. 

Warm brother sins with the soft boy. The soft boy is devout but he does not follow blindly; he tells warm brother that he decides for himself what sins are sins, and what he believes human beings have twisted from God’s word to fit their own ideas. Warm brother likes that about him. So they sin with the soft boy’s new changed flesh.

Afterwards warm brother lies still and breathes steadily and marvels at how close he came to forgetting that he is no more than the vessel he inhabits, the vessel he wrapped around the soft boy’s body and used to kiss him and touch him and that had grown warm and glowed with the pleasure of the sin. 

-

Warm brother sits with cold brother and puts his vessel cheek on cold brother’s vessel shoulder. Cold brother has had a different body every day for the past week. Warm brother has had the same one for the past month. It’s becoming something of a record for them both. 

He confesses his sins into cold brother’s vessel ear. 

Cold brother strikes warm brother’s vessel cheek with an angel palm and singes his vessel skin. The pain burns through him and makes him shudder. He has never felt so much trapped in a body before. But he can feel the burn like ice for a long time after. And the skin of his vessel face heals slowly and scars badly. 

“How do you think we shall ever return, now?” cold brother spits words like venom arrows, “I sense no contrition in you. You are not sorry. You will not be forgiven.”

Warm brother is on his vessel knees again. “Return without me,” he says, “return without me, my brother, and leave me here. I do not know that I wish to return anymore.”

Cold brother kneels with warm brother and grips his vessel jaw. “I cannot,” he growls, “you are my brother, and I cannot.” 

-

Warm brother realises soon enough that he is not the only reason cold brother cannot return. He is certain now that cold brother cannot return at all. Neither could return without the other, but now neither seems able to return at all. Cold brother has tried, and warm brother has watched him, and nothing. Nothing. Here they are on Earth and here they seem doomed to remain. 

Cold brother wonders how long it shall be until he becomes too bonded with a vessel to escape. He wonders how long it shall be until his soul becomes mortal. He chooses younger and younger vessels to inhabit.

Warm brother has been in the same vessel for months. He has been with his soft boy, spending more time with him than he has with his cold brother. His soft boy is so delicate and ages so quickly. Warm brother tries to pretend it is not happening. 

Warm brother spends a lifetime with his soft boy. He is so careful to keep his vessel safe and alive for as long as he can, until he feels soft and reduced and weak, but he does not mind. He tries so hard to cling on to the time, to feel it as a mortal would, to let the years stretch out instead of passing in the time it takes him to blink, to breathe. 

He knows it passes slowly for his soft boy. They lie together sometimes and the soft boy will say, “I feel like I’ve been with you forever.” They lie together and the soft boy will say, “It feels like it has been years and it feels like it has been only moments.”

“How long has it been?” warm brother asks, because it’s hard to tell, being an angel still more than a mortal, being unable to measure the time that passes in a way that he could relate to his soft boy and have him understand, “how long have you been with me?”

“Years,” the soft boy says, “it has been years.” 

“How many years?” warm brother asks.

Soft boy tells him how many years, and it makes warm brother smile, even though it means little to him. He looks down at the backs of his vessel hands and sees them lined and creased with wrinkles. It is funny to him, how the vessel bodies change with age, how one only needs to be looked at to judge how long it has walked the Earth. 

They have grown old together and warm brother has not even noticed. He feels his vessel weakening but he feels a distance from it still; he always feels this distance from it, unless it is touching his soft boy. When they touch he feels the connection so sharply. 

“Are you going to die soon?” he asks late one night, watching his soft boy’s chest rise with the easy breath of almost sleep.

His soft boy turns to him slowly, blinking his heavy eyelids. He has become so old, and he is so beautiful. Warm brother can see the weak pulse of his blood under his skin. He can see the glow of his soul, getting ready to leave.

A smile makes the soft boy’s face crease into even more wrinkles. 

“You still say such strange things, my love,” soft boy says, “Yes, my darling. We are old men. We will be with God, soon.”

Warm brother feels an ache in his centre that he cannot describe. He does not feel like an old man. He does not know what it should feel like, to be one. He can feel that his vessel has grown old; he can feel the physicality of old age. But he cannot know how his soft boy feels on the inside. 

He has not the heart to say that he does not think he will ever see God again. But he is sure that God will want his sweet soft boy in Heaven, even if he does not want warm brother. 

“You are not afraid of death?” warm brother asks, even though he knows he is not. 

“No, my love,” soft boy says, and takes one of warm brother’s vessel hands between both of his own and guides it to the scars that still show faint and silver on his chest. Warm brother’s handprints. 

“God touched me, once, remember?” 

Warm brother’s vessel hands drift idly over the thin, delicate skin.

“I know He is real. I know He will welcome me.”

Soft boy turns to him and smiles, eyes closing. Age makes him tired. Old bodies wear out so fast, have to be rested and fed so often. 

“And you, too, my love. I am not afraid,” he brings warm brother’s vessel hands to his mouth and kisses them, “because we shall be together in His kingdom forever. And I will be happy forever. And there is nothing to be afraid of.”


End file.
